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31 October, 2018

In
a few days we'll celebrate Veterans' Day. It's only been “Veterans'
Day” since 1954. It is still observed in other countries under its
old names: Armistice or Remembrance Day. The observance began in the
early 1900's – 1918 to be exact. On the 11th day of
the 11th month at the 11th hour,
hostilities of the major players along the Western Front in the First
World War would cease. This is the beginning of observing that day
for veterans; for no more war.

At
the end of World War 1, the cost of the war in terms of life and
destruction was so huge, most who participated in that war could not
stomach the thought that the war had accomplished nothing –
mind you, in its immediate aftermath, there was no way a sane person
could rationalize the cost of that war, when gaining mere feet at a
cost of a thousand – or many thousands of lives was too much to
bear. It was called “The War To End All Wars.” Those who lived
it, thought it could not be too much to ask for mankind to avoid such
horrific butchery of the human species ever again.

With
astonishing rapidity, a small group of madmen led the world into a
second horrific war, which was to be called World War II, proving
that insanity isn't solely invested in a single generation. Humans
who aren't capable of engaging with other humans who do not look like
them, cannot be trusted to do the right thing. They are too shallow
and too fearful – for it is fear that causes a lack of engagement
on the political stage – and do not have the intelligence to
comprehend and appreciate plurality. In their feckless claims to
power they over-promise and under-deliver because they have no
substance – no matter how violent and large their army, in a
generation they are gone.

We
know now, without a shadow of a doubt that a similar war – with
more modern weapons – is not a distant possibility. The Russians
have huge stockpile of nuclear weapons as does the US and other
countries a little less. But we all know that there are only a couple
of buttons that can make these monsters go boom. Whether or not you
think of it daily, I would believe that everyone capable of reading
these words would never want to see even the smallest of those
weapons unleashed. And the truth is, even if only one is
unleashed, it will be followed by many, many others and life on earth
will be over.

We
cannot be the generation that acts so recklessly. I am fraught with
fear over the lack of common sense in our leadership today - I am
filled with fear at the rhetoric and lack of decorum and common
sense. I am maddened by the name calling and the dehumanizing of
people who don't quite match the white man. History shows us that all
of this was done before and directly created and set the stage for
WWII. We cannot go down that path once again, because the road is far
too dark and the unseen is all too certain. The substance and essence
of all living generations being vaporized over a dispute, and
assuredly a petty dispute compared to what follows, is too much to
bear.

It
will be on our watch. Veterans Day, by any name, will be worthless.
All of human kind's efforts destroyed by only ego. And in this
moment, consider that we have two observances ahead - two traditions
– that we must consider.

In
the first, we must go to the polls and vote on November 6th - and we
must vote for integrity and competence - for honest and not name
calling - for truth and not for falsely concocted crises at our
borders or in our heartland. We cannot listen to the money changers
and the hopelessly rich. Leaving the booth, we must be able to look
the old woman in the eye, the drug addicted, the homeless, the
jobless and the forlorn. We must hold our head high before
greed and injustice.

In
the second, on the 11th day of the 11th month, we do not need to show
up at parades or stand and salute the flag because those who march in
the parade and the ones whole enough to march. There are many shadows
behind those marchers. The ones who didn't come back; the ones who
cannot leave their sick bed. The cost of war - ANY WAR - should be
enough for us to never declare war. It is a horrid shame that a
people, a democracy, should ever go to war, let alone be the
aggressor. As a people, we have no quarrel with other peoples. The
quarrel is created to sell more bombs and shoot more missiles and
charge more dollars. A democracy should only defend it's borders, it
should never be the invader.

This
is time for sobriety. To consider who we are as a people as well as
who we are not. Let us give up the vice of fear, decide as a majority
that fairness and hope, not profit should be our diplomacy. That
clinging fiercely to the Old motto of our country, "Out of many,
One." There is a light to be held in the darkness. Our lives and
the lives of the children are in the balance this year as never
before.

We
can be Americans - neither Republican or Democrat, neither Christian
nor Hindu; neither brown nor black nor white nor in between.
Honestly, between you and I and that stockpile of atomic weapons, it
is our world to make better or make go away. And it is past
time to act as this is the truth.

Sorry
this isn't very gardenry. I'll be back on topic in a short hitch.
Meanwhile, go vote.

30 October, 2018

What To Do and When To Do It is the informal name we have given to the monthly 1st Saturday class in The Learning Garden, 10 to noon.

November 3rd is coming up fast and I've been so busy, I haven't got around to writing about the class until just now. In my defense, I had a hard drive that had gotten too much data for it's own health and I ended up replacing it myself. Not without a couple of close of moments closely resembling a heart attack! But now I'm almost completely back in business (don't ask me what happened to my back up system though!)

Not the best shot in the world, but you can see the wire holding a tag in place. and the brown material is grafting wax.This was a demonstration graft in my 2018 Winter Grafting Class and the blurry part is a leaf of the graft that has obviously taken! The photo was taken as we inventoried plants we will lose in an upcoming construction adjacent to the garden. But it has a point!

This Saturday's class we will do our usual questions answered and we will plant some winter crops and check on my garlic and carrots we planted last month, but we will also explore planting fruit trees for your eating pleasure. These trees will live twenty or thirty years - if we care for them - and with that kind of production, it is prudent to become educated about fruit trees and which ones do best here and which ones taste the best.

Almost a whole two months since I've said hi. Been Busy. But as the days get shorter, I've got a little news to share.

The UCLA Extension that oversees my classes has found a location on the campus for me to teach so look for an Urban Gardening, Spring Edition in the next quarter's listings. This will be like the Fall Edition except with the warm season garden. To make it worthwhile for those who take the Fall class, I'm changing some things up and we'll have enough difference to make the class worthwhile. Look in this blog for more details upcoming.

I'm very excited about the Spring offering! I had always envisioned there be a Fall and Spring - those two will bring a gardener full circle and experienced with the whole year. We've always needed a Spring class and now we have it! I hope to see you there and I hope you'll find yourself learning as much - or more - than you did in the Fall Quarter. For those who haven't had my Fall class, both classes can stand on their own. The best is both, but if you can't do both, you can do one or the other and still you'll have a great learning experience!

I might be slightly biased.

I've waited a long time for the spring class and I hope to see you there!

02 September, 2018

I was blessed this last week to attend the Al Gore "Climate Reality" training at the Staples center in downtown Los Angeles. It was an exhausting, yet an energetic several days. Several times I was certain my brain was as full as it could get, but they managed to cram more into corners I didn't know I had!

Bunch of folks, 2200 in fact, learned a lot about climatechange in LA this last week. Most of themwere excited and motivated by the training.

We've been hearing more and more about climate change each and every year. On the news, we hear about larger and more violent storms coming to our shores, each year it's a whole new level of destruction. In one year, the worst hurricane statistics are replaced by a new set of "the worst hurricane statistics." And we think this hyperbole is some sort of sales pitch. Scientists, normally a rather reserved group, seem to be coming close to hysteria with their pronouncements - while other groups of people decry the findings as being a political ploy. Which is it? I'm renowned for being a science doubter in the world of GMOs. I still am. But not with climate change. What's the difference? In the case of GMOs, many of the institutions that extol the virtues of GMOs are funded by Monsanto (now Monsanto/Bayer) and I find that kind of science repulsive. There are very few GMO studies by non-affiliated institutions - even the US government is thoroughly riddled with Monsanto employees or former-employees or other close associations (Clarence Thomas, for example, was a Monsanto lawyer for a time) that impress me with too much familiarity to be considered impartial. There is no such alignment in climate change. The climate is not paying outrageous salaries for consultations - in fact, a good many of these scientists reporting on GMOs are not doing the bidding of some huge behemoth of a company that pays their tidy salary. They are fighting an upstream battle - while scientists from the oil and gas industry ARE paid to sow distrust and confusion.Most of the people who left the Climate Reality with me, enjoyed a lot of hope about the future. They left with big smiles, laughing and feeling good. I, on the other hand, left all the presentations feeling depressed. I'm afraid we don't have enough time to change fast enough. This is a blog about food and I left the training feeling that we won't have enough time. IF we moved on it today - traded in our gasoline cars for electric cars - or even hybrids - and each of us composted our waste, while wasting less, and taking public transportation (that isn't even there yet), IF we ate less meat and did a short list of other things, we could change how this plays out. I don't think we will change. At least we won't change fast enough to keep more disasters from happening and sooner than we think, we'll be facing the dead end of climate change. And one of the major problems we will face sooner than later is what will we eat and how will we prepare it? A lot of the food we eat today will be adversely affected. The fruit trees in the Learning Garden are already affected by climate change - they try to flower in Fall and when that doesn't work, they flower in Spring, but the flowering is reduced, weakened, by the futile flowering in Fall. If this keeps up, the trees are going to be repeatedly weakened and I cannot see how we can judge that as a positive phenomena. Humanity may not successfully negotiate these next few decades. We don't have much longer than that to get ahead of this learning curve and to learn how to feed these masses of humans. Can you see us changing? Fast enough? I wish I could.david

01 September, 2018

Can
you? Fall is almost or already here. This is really a busy time for
a gardener even with the evenings coming sooner and mornings later.
I mean it's really a crunch – there is harvesting from the Summer
garden and planting for the Winter garden! But if you find time now,
you'll reap rewards later in the year.

About
half-way into the month, it usually becomes cool enough to sow
arugula, beets, carrots, lettuce, peas, parsnips and turnips. My
leek and fennel seedlings ought to be ready to transplant out, as
should broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, chard,
endive all later in the month. Lettuce is one plant I’ll usually
direct sow in the garden AND start in six packs to set out – there
are advantages to both and so I’ll use both. Root crops –
carrots, beets, radishes and turnips – must be sown where they will
grow. If you ignore my advice and try to sow root crops for
transplanting, you will find beets, radishes and turnips will produce
a crop, but they are so set back by the transplanting process it
really isn't worth it – carrots and parsnips simply do not perform
at all unless you are incredibly meticulous and then it's just not
worth the time.

My friend Joy Sun grew
this amaranth - a plant we are harvesting this time of year -
beautiful with the lablab bean flowers around it.

As
September wanes, probably the most productive time in the Southern
California potager begins. If you are eating from your garden, now
is the time you can really feast for awhile, the last of summer –
peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, okra, sweet corn, basil – is still
out there to eat and the first root crops or lettuce will be big
enough to munch a bite or two. I enjoy eating BLT sandwiches and for
a brief moment in spring and a second brief moment at this time; the
homemade BLT is one of my rituals. I bake my own bread, and the
tomato and lettuce come from my garden so the only non-homemade items
are the bacon and the mayo. It's almost a mystical experience,
especially when the bread is still warm from the oven. Finish it off
with a dessert of figs heated on the grill or in a broiler, drizzled
with a bit of honey on them and a dollop of some fairly stout Greek
yogurt. Oh, to die for! Not some store-bought fig shipped in from
far away, but a fig that got ripe on a tree in the back yard or from
a local farmer at your farmers' market.

Fava
beans, lentils and peas are being planted now, too. All of these
grow best in our cooler winters. Fava beans were the only bean in
the Old World before the American plants became part of the European
pantheon; all the other beans are American (as are tomatoes, peppers,
and potatoes among others – one wonders how in the world the
Italians and French survived long enough to arrive at a culinary
tradition!). Fava bean plants, as well as lentils and peas, make a
marvelous addition to any soil building program and favas, when
combined with artichoke hearts, make a Mediterranean stew so
delicious that my taste buds flutter just to remember.

This
is an exciting time to be gardening. Grab your imagination and take
it to where you are planting. Think about the eventual size of what
you are planting – it's OK to make mistakes – that's how we
learn! When I'm teaching a class, the truth of it is, I have
probably killed more plants than anyone else in the room and yet,
they are the ones saying “I have a black thumb.” That's probably
the biggest lie they can tell me. When I kill a plant, I usually
know why it died and sometimes it isn't my fault. When it IS my
fault, it's usually because I wasn't paying attention. Death by
inattention isn't a 'black thumb' issue unless you do things like
forget to stop the car when parking or forget to go to get breakfast
in the morning. Death by inattention can be reformed – it's simply
changing your patterns. Be kind to yourself and you'll learn. It's
all good.

When
we harvest a tomato, we are really harvesting the soil's fertility
that has been converted via the sun's energy into the vegetables from
our garden. Putting the tomato plant back into the soil, without the
tomatoes you harvested, represents a net loss for the soil. That's
where the additional mulch and compost come in – we try to replace
the vegetables we have eaten with organic matter that will allow the
soil to recreate its bevy of nutrients nourishing our next season's
garden. It is not sufficient, in the long run, to just add
fertilizers – we need to add things that will provide sustenance
for the fungi, bacteria and other critters living in our garden's
soil; a thriving soil ecology will provide better nutrition to your
plants without spending needless dollars on fertilizer, most of which
will only become pollution in our ground water or vaporize off into
the atmosphere.

In
a garden where perennial weeds are not a huge problem, I like the
idea of planting a perennial crop that will assist in nourishing the
soil – these are sometimes called cover crops or 'manure crops' if
they are planted in the beds. My method is a little different,
because the crop is allowed to stay in the paths, like any one of
several clovers or an alfalfa that will take mild foot traffic and
will do something to add to the fertility of the soil. If this crop
is mowed in a sustainable manner – like without a gas powered lawn
mower – the clippings can be put right back into the beds or added
to a compost pile for more green material. Unfortunately, for those
of us growing in most community gardens, control of perennial weeds
is only as good as the worst gardener. If one gardener doesn't keep
them in check, perennial weeds will infest the pathways and there is
no good way to get rid of them without digging them out of the
pathways. Not having perennial paved paths is another compromise one
makes in community gardening.

Keep
in mind that some kind of soil regeneration must be happening all the
time or the soil will eventually not support food crops. It is
better to do this regeneration little by little in our smaller
gardens. Folks with larger areas, or a long vacation coming up, can
plant cover crops to increase the soil's fertility over a season.
For gardeners in Sunset Zones 22 and 24, that means a part of the
garden can be left without growing crops to harvest every single
month of the year. In areas where there is not a huge problem with
perennial weeds, the paths supplement this soil enrichment by growing
something like clover year round to improve the soils vibrancy. In
any growing season, it is better to have the soil
covered with some crop – even a crop of weeds is better than
leaving the soil barren. Although it would be ideal if you were to
get rid of the weeds before they began to go to seed. Protecting the
soil from wind and rain is imperative and bare soil fares the worst.
Having some plant there with roots in the soil makes all difference
in keeping soil – especially on a slope – in place.

Once
you've built good garden soil, you don't want it to leave. We work
hard to make our soils the kind of soils our gardening friends will
drool over. But one hard rain, or a Santa Ana event on bare soil,
even really good soil, can ruin all that work.

Green
manure crops have been a time honored way of helping the soil regain
lost fertility. Farmers have known for centuries that bean crops add
nitrogen to the soil and bulky plants add to the tilth of the soil.
Alfalfa is prized for its extensive root system that breaks up the
hard subsoil and bring nutrients trapped out of the reach of other
plants into its leaves – adding them to the soil or compost pile
brings all that into an area where it can be made available to your
veggies.

Clover,
as well as alfalfa, creates nitrogen – what is called 'fixing
nitrogen' and is beneficial to most garden plants. Clover, as a
member of the bean family – the Legumes, they are called – has a
symbiotic relationship to a bacterium in the soil. The bacteria
invade the bean plants roots and the plant feeds the bacteria – the
bacteria return the favor by taking atmospheric nitrogen – which
plants can't use – turning it into a form that plants can use.
Growing fava beans, lentils, peas, or garbanzo beans all will add
nitrogen to your soil – whether you harvest the beans or not.
Whenever you think you need fertilizer, consider using a green manure
crop instead. It takes longer, but the results are much more
gratifying.

Once
you have begun to work on your soil, never leave it uncovered to the
wind and the sun. Those elements will destroy your soil and will not
help your garden's production or water/nutrient holding capacity.
It is best to use a cover of plant material, even weeds if you have
nothing else! Pull the weeds, leave them in the path with their
roots exposed to the sun and within 24 hours, they'll be toast and
you can spread them along your paths or even place them near your
plants (this is also a good thing to do with your cover crops –
while it's better to put them in your compost (as greens), you can
also pull the cover crop, lay them on the path to dry and use them as
your pathway mulch.

In
a different world, where the perennial weeds are kept at a minimum, a
wonderful path planted of cover crops is a gift that keeps on giving.
The green manure crop produces nitrogen that will eventually help
your garden plants out, it's pleasant to walk on an almost lawn –
even barefoot if you are so inclined. And kept up, looks positively
divine, darling! We cannot do this at The Learning Garden – too
many perennial weeds!

Start
These In Containers

Start
These In The Ground

Move
to the Ground from Containers

All
cabbage family crops

Fava
beans

Fava
beans

Lettuce

Any
cabbage family plant big enough to survive.

Leeks

Potatoes
(tubers)

Leeks

Shallots
(seed)

Carrots*

Herbs

Lentils

Peas

Garbanzo
beans

Garlic
(bulbs)

Shallots
(bulbs)

Beets*

Radishes*

*You must grow root crops in the
ground from the very beginning because they transplant poorly, even
if you are spectacularly careful in transplanting, very few will
avoid having ugly deformed roots – it just is not worth the effort!

You can begin planting right now
between the dying, dismal plants of summer – just get right in
there and sow your seeds or transplant your little baby plants!

21 August, 2018

I was actually asked to leave the Orchid Supply Hardware (OSH) this evening. It was sudden with all customers were asked to leave as soon as possible and the doors locked behind us.

I was actually doing a restock for Renee's Garden seeds and had seeds (old and new) all over the place. I had to ask for some time to get my act together and get out. I took all the old seeds we'd checked out and left the seeds for 2019 in the store, thinking I'd come back Wednesday morning to finish the job.

But this evening, I see this headline on Facebook from the East Bay Times, publishing not far from the place that OSH was started:

All Orchard Supply Hardware stores to close by year’s end

Chain founded in 1931 as a cooperative in San Jose

This is a very sad moment in my life. I enjoyed shopping there since I found the store not far from me and found a LOT of what I needed and wanted. I found the employees motivated, happy (mostly) and willing to help. And frequently found employees that really knew their stuff about the department they were in. I had been with the Culver City store since it opened just over a year ago and I appreciated that staff the most. They were eager, it seemed to help, friendly and smart. As the gravity set in, I began to grieve for the many workers I knew, realizing that, for most of them, it was going to be a hard thing to deal with.

I hate the idea of the stress these fine people will face through no fault of their own.

You can find more information here. For all my friends who are affected by this, I hope this opens a better life for you - that this is only a bump on your life path.

And thank you for helping me find the whatchamacallit over on Aisle 24....

19 August, 2018

One of the sharpest and most useful
tools I own is a garden journal. In my journal, I can find the dates
I planted various seeds, or when I transplanted my tomatoes and I can
track major points in their growth with my notes.

A good journal is the way to learn from
your mistakes even if you have a less than perfect memory.

A garden journal should begin by
answering one major question:

Why do I
want to grow in my garden?

What is
the purpose of this garden?

OK, I can't count. But, honestly, you
have to know where you're headed or you won't know you got there, if
in fact you DO get there! Some answers to that question might be: I
want to eat some of my own home grown food on a regular basis; I want
to have fresh strawberries; I want to feel independent of the food
system; I want to grow tomatoes; I want my children to have clean,
pesticide free food. Or a combination of these. But to get there or
to head that direction needs thoughtful and intentional steps. Often
times when I go on consultations, I am amazed that people want a
“garden” and that's all they really know.

Your garden journal changes that and
allows you to move towards your ideals and helps you build a base of
knowledge that will change your approach to gardening. You will
begin to see signs, and by referring back to your journal, you will
be able to see appropriate responses to encourage or discourage an
event of some kind.

The Essentials

Your initial entries to your journal
will be fairly mundane, but they are the foundation of your garden.
First, include a drawing, or comprehensive photos of your garden with
measurements. Find North and indicate that on your drawing. Note:
Use a compass – LA's street grids are oftentimes NOT on a N/S axis.
Which is a good thing!

Track the sun's travel over your
garden. Note that it will travel closer to the north in summer and
closer to south in the winter. If this doesn't leave you with an
appreciation of the difference, track the shadows weekly for a few
months. Take a day that you normally devote to taking it easy,
decide to find the shadow of something that won't move, maybe the
shadow of a fireplace chimney, at the same time everyday. Track how
it goes over your garden through the year.

Just a little practice with the shadows cast from the sun, and
the lengthening days of summer vs the shortening days of winter
will bring a whole new appreciation of these things that happen in
our world. It will also give insights to the rituals of the
pre-Christian civilizations who aligned their holidays to the
solstices and equinoxes that ruled their calendar, ordering their
years' activities – most importantly when to plant – to their
established norms.

Now you know where your sun comes from
throughout the year and you can see how much shade you have to deal
with. Just because you don't have eight hours of sun, don't give
up! I have learned that light colored buildings reflect a lot of
light and can make up for some of your garden's shortfall. You would
like 8 hours of direct light for most food plants, but a large
building bordering on the north can increase the amount of sunlight
appreciably.

Practical Considerations

If you have had a little exposure to my teaching, you will
know the first thing you plant in your garden is a chair. And though
it's a funny line, I'm dead serious. “The best fertilizer is the
farmer's shadow,” and that means, being there, you'll spot problems
when they are small and be able to intervene BEFORE the damage is too
far gone to deal with. If you need to, find a small table or a wooden
box to use as a table – which I use for my coffee and my notebooks

If this is a new garden, START SMALL. I
know you want the whole 40 acres planted before sundown, but hold on,
Tiger! You can do that. But I'll bet you a tidy sum that should you
actually do that, you will hurt your garden to the point you may
never come back to it. Take on a manageable slice – maybe 3' by 3'
to start. Plant that this week. Next week do the next nine square
feet.

I mean for you to clear a small patch
of weeds and plant that patch. Next week, do the same for the next
small patch, from weeds to planting. This will prevent you from
overdoing it on the first event. Remember, this is for the long haul
and I want you to be able to keep up on this, besides that pause
might enable you to not make a mistake and propagating it thru the
entire garden! There's more I can say on this, but this is an
article on your journal.

The Journal Itself

There are two ways to do the journal.

Artistically Inclined –
Means you can write legibly and draw your garden etc. Get good
at this and you can publish a book

NOT Artistically Inclined –
do the text in a word processor file and import photos from your
phone or camera to illustrate stuff. If you have to draw
something, you can scan it into your notebook.

In my years of teaching, I have seen
some gorgeous student notebooks done by artistically inclined
individuals. That would not be me. I use the computer. You can make
a hybrid and print your pages from the computer to draw on them or
other pages. Whatever suits you – find the one that fits with you
and your abilities and lifestyle.

A sample entry:

02 August 2018

82º/67º

Clear

Humidity: 67%

A warm day with a lovely breeze. My
flat of basils sowed on the 26th are looking cute. Out of
the 6 color-packs I planted, I have over 90 little plants. I will
take these home and bring them in at night to prevent predation.

Harvesting several varieties of
tomatoes – the biggest producer so far (it's early!) has been
Nebraska Wedding. It's a good tasting tomato on a well-behaved plant
about 3' tall. Their main drawback is a really tough skin. I've also
had a few of the Illini Gold. A good solid fruit, well-behaved and
also a tough skin. Haven't had enough of either to make a sauce.
The heat wave a few weeks back really fried some of the vines.

Set out my colored cotton two
varieties, finally; Arkansas Green Lint and Sea Island Brown. Need
to gather up seeds from the green beans. Harvested the last of the
broccoli seeds (Nutribud). And water!

Upcoming – plant out the basil for
pesto day!

Get ready to plant the two beds
without broccoli – what will go there?

I have massive amounts of seeds to
clean broccoli/garbanzos/lettuce

Save some of the yellow tomatoes to
make sauce

Get watering help for upcoming days –
August and September

A Problem Arises

So, a couple of months into this, you
are concerned. Your plants don't look like you thought they would
and after re-reading the ad copy in the seed catalog, perhaps you
missed-read the date by which they would be producing. Checking back
you might find, there was a cold snap about the time they were
getting pollinated – or maybe in your notes, you refer to a very
hot day when you couldn't get out to water. Using that data, perhaps
you can correlate that data with what is happening now? Perhaps you
allow yourself to dig up one of your plants – or at least dig near
the plant to see what you can see. You find the soil is very dry.
Now, why would that be? You can see in your journal it hasn't rained
since Ford was President (or something, like that). Your notebook
will aid you in your sleuthing. Maybe rain wasn't the problem. Maybe
you find out your irrigation system was turned off when you were
planting earlier in the month? The more notes you take, the easier it
will be to solve the problem. On the other hand, every day in the
garden doesn't warrant it's own novel!

Or maybe your journal wasn't needed for
a problem. Maybe it was “what was that fabulous tomato I planted
last year?” All these data points work with you for a better
garden. Record the dates when you plant plants. You will soon
realize that all those dates on the seed packets do not really apply
to us. Partly because we plant all year round, we experience much
different days to maturity. Especially in our Fall planted root
crops. Those figures are computed for days that are getting longer
and warmer. Our Fall crops are planted as the days get shorter and
colder and they, therefore, take a lot longer to get up to edible
size! Honestly, it's not your fault!

If you are using a handwritten journal
that you take into the garden, consider using pencil to do your
writing; pencil won't bleed or smudge. Also carry it in a bag that
water will not penetrate, whether it will smudge or not. Computer
journals are usually left inside the computer which usually isn't
watered (we hope!). If you do take your laptop into the garden,
please be careful with it. I usually have the computer near the
garden, but never IN the garden. At The Learning Garden, I leave it
on the patio – within sight of the garden and in the shade – that
gives sun protection to me, and dry conditions for the computer when
I do begin to update the journal.

I know it seems like a hassle.
However, you should take breaks while working on your garden, and I
feel updating my garden journal is as important as the actual
planting – AND – I am grateful to be able to switch gears whilst
gardening. I can dig and plant and get all dirty and sweaty. Then
take a moment to rinse my hands, wipe off my arms, pull out a cold
drink (I like sparkling water, myself) and do my notes right at the
garden as a break from the physical labor. Ten or twenty minutes
later (or more, could be much more), I go back to the blazing sun and
the physical work of gardening.

Keeping your own garden journal is
satisfying and it the best way for gardeners to learn and become more
aware of the garden's needs and predilections of weather and the soil
you are dealing with. It is the fastest way to become a garden guru!